


Kindred Instruments

by ollipop



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Better Living Through Chemistry, Coming of Age, Gen, Jackson's Whole, No One Kills You Like Family, medical research
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 18:59:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ollipop/pseuds/ollipop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>They know just as much about Lotus as she knows about herself. They know her aptitudes, her weaknesses. They have tweaked the neurochemical bath on her copies, for maximum effect. They are her, improved. She is them, unedited. She hates them.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Lotus Durona: Nature or nurture?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kindred Instruments

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Minutia_R](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/gifts).



> Thanks forever to raspberryhunter, to Isis, and to Carmarthen for the encouragement and thorough beta. Thanks to Rh for pulling out the worst of my science implausibilities. And thanks to minutia_r for a prompt that got into my brain and wouldn't let go!
> 
> Title is from Dessa's "The Beekeeper".

“Chrys is just like you at that age.” Lilly said it fondly, but Lotus bristled at the comment anyway. Lotus Durona of Jackson’s Whole is a scientist, doctor, clone-daughter of Lilly, and a major asset of House Fell. She’s now also part of a matched set. The younger group of clones—the first group, Lotus reminded herself—had all begun working in the labs over the past six months, and the effect was chaotic. She and Rose had gotten themselves into a comfortable rhythm of research, with Lilly quietly in the background checking their proofs and making corrections as needed. Now there were nine of them tweaking the data set, making identical notes, finishing each other’s sentences. Their mannerisms were too similar to one another’s, and Lotus found herself calling them Lilly and Rose and Chrys.

They know just as much about Lotus as she knows about herself. They know her aptitudes, her weaknesses. They have tweaked the neurochemical bath on her copies, for maximum effect. They are her, improved. She is them, unedited. She hates them.

+++

Lotus entered the lab juggling a tablet and a tray of baby bottles. “Lilly, can we request a correction to these registry papers for the group we uncorked last week? They’re all stating House Fell as the owner and responsible party, instead of Durona.”

“No, they’re correct,” Lilly responded, not looking up from her micro-viewer. “House Fell includes Durona, and as such all the new clones fall to Baron Fell.”

“Fell didn’t create them, we did. Fell couldn’t splice his way out of a kitchen.”

“It would be ridiculous to give away information on our growth patterns.” Lilly closed the micro-viewer and blinked owlishly at Lotus.

“But you said that with this group, we would build more autonomy. How can we better our Deal with the Baron when he owns us?”

“When this group is grown and working, child, no one will own them. Until then, they’re just distractions. Let Fell be distracted by them.” Lilly turned fully away and walked down the lab bench to continue her viral tagging. Lotus’s complaint was dismissed.

+++

Lotus was alarmed when the first set of siblings began lab work. Lilly threatened to pull Lotus from lab duty when Lotus became frustrated by their mistakes, and by her own—watching the younger sibs had an amplifying effect.

“It’s not working.” Violet, one of the younger copies, frowned worriedly at a screen as she bumped a valve open, then closed, then open again.

“It’s not working because you’re trying to rush it. Stop looking at it. Sit. Za zen.”

“It should be monitored by someone,” the girl fretted. “We can titrate the nutrient bath better if we have someone with eyes on it the whole time.”

“Or, we can let it play itself out and you might have a prayer of replicating it. Keep it up, little one, and you’ll be stuck doing every gel split from now until the end of time. We’ll call it the Violet Durona method. We could even clone you a batch of tiny Violettas to do just what you’re doing right now.”

“Lilly just needs one positive result before we make a decision on whether to continue. We can refine the technique later.” For a moment, Lotus felt compassion for the girl, who seemed caught between her empirical methods and her desire to please Lilly no matter what. Then reason re-asserted itself; the sooner this copy was disabused of that impulse, the better.

“Oh, and we could never Deal without the Durona lab getting it right the first time,” Lotus huffed. “ _Sit,_ child, and wait.”

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

“And innovation is the mother of fortune.”

Lotus watched Violet skeptically. When she was with the younger group of clones, she just didn’t feel like herself.

+++

“The new virus works beautifully, Lilly. Much faster than planned.” Lotus smiled archly at the older woman; they were alone for their weekly review, with hand-viewers of specimens on one side of the table and a tea set on the other.

Rose had arrived at the animal lab that morning to find a hutch full of dead rabbits, and initial necropsies found the results of the toxin to be slightly more dramatic than had been expected. Lotus had taken a perverse pleasure in Rose’s discomfiture at the effects. _You want a toxin? I’ll make you a toxin._ However, trials in human subjects were being pushed back, based on the anticipated cost. A high death rate in the human subjects trial would be expensive, inconvenient, and would only alarm the younger researchers.

Lilly pursed her lips and frowned at the teapot. “It’s not supposed to be fast. I need your lab to create a few more limiting factors, so the death rate isn’t so high.” She gazed at Lotus in some disdain. “You may detach two more staff from Rose’s lab, if you need them. Aster would be a good choice, perhaps.”

“We _are_ making a poison, are we not?”

“But we also want subtlety, Lotus. If the attenuated spore creates these results, a live version will be uncontrollable. We still need to ensure that it won’t turn wild. Now, do pour the tea.”

Lotus raised her chin stubbornly. “That merely raises the price of the antidote.”

“Desperation doesn’t raise the price of the antidote; persistence and fear are what will raise the price. If the antidote is offered three months after the outbreak, people will give everything they have. If the antidote is offered three years after the outbreak, people will give what they have, raise more, and give that too. Leverage your victims, dear.” Lilly’s face was distant, already considering the next project. “Sugar, please?”

+++

Lotus Durona didn’t care to go topside if she were given a choice. Her own lab space, in the medical facility she shared with a score of colleagues, was spare but comfortable. However, Baron Fell didn’t care to come down to the planet’s surface unless he had to, and Fell Station—in high orbit—was the place where most of the trade was handled.

As luxurious as Baron Fell’s accommodations could be, there was never quite enough room on the orbital station to make Lotus feel safe, or to give her the privacy she craved. The corridors and cabins were built to some kind of psychological minimum safe distance, by engineers whose first priority would never be the grace or serenity of one’s living space. Lilly Durona, who was directing Fell’s trade negotiations from the research side, had explained to Lotus that she’d be able to access a basic lab here, but Lotus couldn’t imagine any kind of creative work happening in a coffin like this. In the topside lab, she would be able to go through the motions, protocols that any tech should be able to replicate. Why, then, was _Lotus’s_ work necessary?

House Fell was buying medical information from House Bharaputra. On the surface, this was ridiculous, given the expertise of Fell’s in-house laboratory. But in the Durona Group there was no such thing as cheap labor, and Bharaputra’s expertise in life-extension treatments was truly unparalleled. In return for sharing information with Fell, Bharaputra would get Lotus as a medical advisor until the conclusion of the project, some 18 months hence. Lotus was intellectual collateral.

Lotus had unhooked her restraints as soon as she felt the locks clamp into the station, and now she paced restlessly between the hatch and the far wall of the passenger cabin. When Lilly ducked through from the cockpit, Lotus froze in a defensive posture.

“Have a seat, my dear,” Lilly said. “The pilots will be another few minutes, and there’s no sense tiring yourself out before the meeting begins.”

By the time the lock hissed open some ten minutes later, Lilly had gentled Lotus down into a conference chair. Lilly nibbled delicately at a cream cake that one of the younger girls had packed for them before the morning’s flight. Lotus nibbled her fingernails.

Baron Fell himself pulled open the hatch and peered in at them. “Ah, there are my treasures! Welcome aboard, Duronas, and may you find your stay on Fell Station to be both pleasant and profitable.”

Lilly smiled delicately and turned away from him to fold the cloth back over her cake. Lotus stood, cautiously, and made her way towards Baron Fell.

+++

The station orientation process was fairly straightforward. Lotus toggled between security trainings and medical visits, ostensibly to immunize her against the biohazards of the joint lab but more practically to keep tabs on any unknown substances that she might have been exposed to by her new “colleagues”. After that she was provided with a corner of the station lab for the next six months, working with two of Bharaputra’s research team and assorted Fell medical techs. The Bharaputrans had acquired a prokaryote that was found to be cyanogen-resistant and were “delighted” to collaborate with Fell’s Durona Group on the sequencing of the commodity for a 40% share of the first ten years of profit. Fell loved the Deal for its ongoing access to Bharaputra’s biomed strategy, and frankly looked forward to a decade of haggling and sniping over price. Bharaputra had recently been in merger discussions with Ryoval which Fell needed to thwart.

Bharaputra’s Deal had originally included two years of work by Lilly Durona herself, in return for a 60% profit. Lilly, for her part, had offered a clone—how convenient!—and a reduced sentence, in a safe house on Fell Station. Lotus seethed at the idea of being locked on a station for a year, even if it was in the relative privacy of a stranger’s lab.

Baron Bharaputra made a point to visit Lotus during her first week in the lab. She first sensed him as one would a ghost—another user viewing her comconsole, then a shadow behind the vid pickup. Lotus grew more tense as the surveillance continued. When an administrator finally entered and announced his presence, she pushed the comconsole screen away but didn’t even bother to stand.

“Lotus Durona. We are honored to have your research skills here,” the Baron said as he approached. He was a broad, hard-faced man, wearing a vulpine smile and a lab coat carelessly thrown over a startling blue suit. He extended his hand to Lotus, ignoring her surgical glove. After a glance and a glare, Lotus carefully pulled off the glove and took his hand. It was as cold and dry as hers.

“Yes,” agreed Lotus. She could think of nothing to say about her work, her Deal, or the premises.

“We’re hopeful there will be some profit for you in the collaboration as well. Perhaps you will wish to consult with our transplant team. How are your surgical skills?”

“If you give me a knife, I’ll demonstrate.” Lotus’s sly look swept over the Baron, rather than the lab in general. She’d been sent here as a cheaper copy of Lilly; it wasn’t her job to impress her new employer. Idly, she thought: _Let me cut off your hand and then we’ll see if I can sew it back on._

The Baron grinned. “Maybe later.” He cast a thoughtful look over Lotus’s hands. “We could certainly arrange for you to observe, lend your clinical expertise. We can always make room for one more.”

+++

Vasa Luigi visited her persistently enough that Lotus eventually began responding to his comments with something closer to amusement than to scorn.

“You’re wasted here, Lotus,” he purrs as he sidles up behind her in lab. “Don’t you want to branch out from time to time? Build something new, not follow this outdated model.”

“Oh, Bharaputra’s models are outdated?” Lotus raises one eyebrow at him. “Your head researcher will be crushed to hear it.”

“Watts has been lacking a certain… panache, in recent years. Though he’s commended for his effort, to be sure.”

“You could let him go his own way, bring in someone new.”

“I made a lifetime commitment to him. He’ll finish out his work here.” He made it sound like a threat. “Perhaps you’d like to… better acquaint yourself with him? Guide him in some new directions?”

His eyes were hooded and dark. _I’m being tested,_ Lotus thought.

“I’m only here for three more months,” Lotus said. “I’d hate to interfere. And I should get back to work.” _My work is peptides, not career counseling. Let him die._

Vasa Luigi chuckled in her ear. “I could arrange for you to stay quite a bit longer than that.”

Lotus raised her chin, smiling. “You couldn’t afford me.”

+++

Lilly found Bharaputra’s attitude towards his lab investments to be crude. “Of course those projects COULD be done, by any competent scientist, given twenty years and the right materials. But the brain transplants are an ugly business.”

“Uglier than bioweapons?” Lotus shrugged. “There’s quite a bit of craftsmanship involved.”

“The work _we_ do, at least, is for a purpose. Weapons aren’t the only thing we make. And we make them in the hopes that they will never need to be used.” Lilly sat up primly and pushed the stack of viewers far to one side, as if to illustrate her point.

“How many groups bought Peritaint from House Fell, Lilly? How many people died, without the antidote? That was your work, and mine, and Rose’s.” Lotus’s stomach was knotted with anger and she couldn’t express why. She was _proud_ of that poison; it had been their first masterpiece. And it had been devastatingly effective.

Lilly’s face clouded for a moment, then slid back into a blank serenity as a younger clone entered the room bearing tea. Lilly waved the girl away with one hand and began setting down saucers and a tiny pot of sugar.

“He tried to buy you, Lotus.” Lilly’s voice is flat, disapproving. Worried?

“What are you talking about? He can’t buy people. He can buy contracts, but I’m not contracted to you.”

“Not to me, no. You’re part of the Durona Group—in contract to Georish Stauber, and thus to House Fell. Don’t worry, my dear; Baron Fell isn’t looking to sell or trade at the moment. Georish wouldn’t allow it.” Lilly poured the tea herself. The Duronas had maintained their close relationship with Georish Stauber ever since they had both entered House Fell, and Georish had been protected these many years by holding an asset that Fell couldn’t afford to lose.

Lotus corrected her peevishly. “As a member of the Durona Group, _I’m_ not interested in changing the terms of my contract. My plan is to stay here, or leave Jackson’s Whole entirely.”

Lilly stared at her, looked away, took a sip of tea. When she finally met Lotus’s eyes, she was more vulnerable than Lotus had ever seen her. “You’re not a member of the Group. You are its property. You can’t leave the Whole. Nor could I, if I tried. If Georish becomes Baron, we’ll have more autonomy, but the contract remains.”

Lotus stared at Lilly as if she were a stranger. Leaving the Whole had been an idle threat, until Lotus heard those words.

Lotus passed Lilly the sugar without needing to be asked. They sat in silence until the tea grew cold.

+++

The following week, Lotus brought three younger Duronas to the Bharaputra lab for a peer review of the cyanogen tolerance project. The four of them sat with heads bowed in opposite corners of a work bench, not far enough away from one another for privacy, when Vasa Luigi approached Lotus and peered over her shoulder in a proprietary way.

“When Watts said he could use a couple more researchers like you, I don’t think he understood what he was asking for. Four Lotuses could be downright terrifying in the wrong circumstance.”

Lotus makes an effort not to look up. “I’m not Lotus, I’m Mari. Go away.”

Vasa Luigi chuckled. “Of course you’re Lotus. I’d recognize you anywhere. You’re hot blooded.” He holds a hand just an inch above her neck. From the other side of the workbench, Mari looks up at them and frowns.

“Bringing you flowers has already been tried, hasn’t it?” he murmured to her.

“What good would that do?”

“It would prove to you that I’m interested in _your_ work, not just any Durona sister.”

“They’re not sisters. They’re colleagues.” Lotus frowned at her microviewer, not meeting the Baron’s eyes. _Copies,_ Lotus thought. _We_ _are poor copies of one another._

“Perhaps you didn’t want to be either of those. Perhaps you want out of the garden,” he whispered. He pressed a data card on her with eyes intent, all trace of teasing gone. “You let me know when you want to know more.”

Despite herself, Lotus found herself gazing after him as he spun on his heel and left the lab. When he turned to glance at her, she was still transfixed. It was barely a month before Lotus found an excuse to return to House Bharaputra, under the guise of clinical observation.

+++

Back at the Durona Group’s lab, her announcement that she was interested in learning brain transplants had been met with horror. One of the younger lab techs had blanched further when Lotus asked what the difference was between making clones for life extensions and making clones for lab work. By that point, Lotus had heard the phrase one too many times: “we can’t control what the customer does with our product, so why should we ask?”

She studied the brain transplant procedure in her spare hours at Bharaputra’s lab downside. The first time she scrubbed in, she told herself it was for educational purposes only. After the patient had been stabilized and the failing body had been wrapped for disposal, she looked up to see Vasa Luigi in the observation theater, watching her intently. She glared at him and turned away—she didn’t want to be watched.

The patient had safely awoken and was responding to simple questions, and the head physician had finished the surgical recap with a pious accounting of the good work of the surgical team, who had saved this very important man— whose anonymity had frayed rapidly as soon as the sheet was lifted—from decline and certain death. The Baron had personally attended this transplant, which was deeply unusual and thought to be a condition of payment from their patient.

As usual, the Baron ignored her rebuff and followed her down the hallway after the debriefing. “You did quite well in the operating room,” he told her confidentially. All of his compliments sounded patronizing to Lotus.

“What did I do well?” Lotus replied. “I stood and observed quite well? Kept a straight face quite well? I didn’t do any of the heavy lifting in there.”

“You’d be so much happier with a position in House Bharaputra. You’d have freedom from Lilly’s more …arbitrary restrictions. Access to top researchers, not just at professional conferences, but all the time. Diversity of thought, perhaps.”

“You’ll have to Deal with Fell for that.”

“I tried, and he claimed not to have a price on you. He told me he knew you were too committed to your sisters.” Vasa Luigi’s tone was mocking; he’d met Duronas and knew better.

“So now you’re trying to steal what you can’t buy. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“I’m not stealing. I’m making an offer. And I must say that I prefer to trade directly when I can.” Once again, the large man was hovering several inches too close for comfort, his arms reflecting heat back from her own skin.

“You could come work for me, you know. We’d give you all the resources you want, only fifteen surgeries a year.”

Lotus’s derision was plain on her face. “I have a research group, thanks. Try Ceta.”

“It’s neither your group nor Lilly’s, and you know it. You serve at the pleasure of Baron Fell. Have you ever asked him whether he’d like to spin off the Durona Group? What do you think would happen to your funding then?”

“If I’ve already got a Baron, why should it matter with whom I’m aligned?” Lotus shrugged out of her lab jacket, bundled it inside out, and shoved it down the sterilizer.

“Why, indeed. I suppose you’ll stay with Fell, then; you wouldn’t leave your sisters.” He gave the last word a sarcastic hiss, and leaned in until he was mere inches from her. “You’ll spend the next few decades watching yourself breathe.” Lotus tightened, couldn’t repress a tiny shudder as she stepped away.

She tried to maintain a casual air as she began the Deal. “We could make a profitable relationship within a reasonable timeframe; I’ll join the lab for ten years, five surgeries a year. I’ll train two apprentices in those ten years. Then I’ll go my own way, and you’ll have an incident rating to make you the envy of the Whole.”

“You want me to let you run my lab for ten years, then leave to create your own and take over the Duronas and mine? Not bloody likely. If you join us, you’re here for good.”

She laughed in disbelief. “You want me to stay permanently? You might as well be talking about a marriage Deal. You couldn’t afford me.”

“What a brilliant idea. Marry me, then.”

Lotus wheeled to face him, mocking. “You couldn’t afford me as a researcher, let alone as a wife.”

“I’ve been married twice, and I assure you that I kept both my wives quite well.” Vasa Luigi steepled his fingers piously.

Lotus gave him a calculating look, and began to consider her options.

+++

Lotus’s Deal turned out to be creative control of Bharaputra Labs, including veto power on projects. Research at the edge of human knowledge, without outdated ethical restrictions. She preferred clinical trials to brain transplants, though she didn’t take issue with the procedure as a source of income. After all, House Fell created weaponry, and dealt enough death within Lilly’s “ethical” bounds that there’s really very little that she could do that would be any worse. House Bharaputra, at the very least, will not be building plagues.

She brought in Canaba, brought in Orson, provided them an unlimited research fund from which to draw. When Vasa Luigi told her after five years that her lab would unable to continue at that level of funding, she asked how many further brain transplants would be required to bring in the funds they want, and committed to doing five each year, personally. She trained as a surgeon; how difficult could it be? As it turned out, she was better than most. Her incident rate dropped below two percent after ten years, and she instituted security protocols to minimize “accidents” such as the one that befell Baron Fell’s clone in pre-op.

Why had she wanted to leave, all those years ago? She doesn’t truly know, so much as it bothered her to watch herself in a mirror every day and night, every day of her life. She didn’t want to be studied all day long. And she didn’t want to lie to herself, or want to be lied to by a group of people who are, basically, herself.

+++

The clone had been the Baron’s idea, when she was barely on the far side of fifty. For the better part of ten years she steadfastly refused. “I’ve been cloned before,” she said flatly. “The results were unsatisfactory.”

Where Vasa Luigi, she believed, saw only empty bodies and the promise of immortality, she saw hours of replicator maintenance. Nurses, three shifts a day, for three years. Tedious little rhymes, perseverating emotional response, a constant plaintive need to be touched. There hadn’t been enough nurses to go around—Baron Fell called them a waste, with security concerns and the older cohort eventually looking after the younger anyway—and in the cavernous nursery Chrys and Rose had shared a bed for two years, unwilling to leave each other’s side. They failed mirror tests for almost 18 months, until Nursie despaired; they had called one another by their own names. Lilly had been unimpressed, but wasn’t willing to give up the experiment.

And then? Eventually the clone would differentiate, become imperfect, and develop quirks and flaws that would need to be smoothed down. Or not; if Lotus did decide to transplant, the clone’s habits would be of little importance. Most customers reported that the muscle memory lasted a scant five or six months before fading.

As for the brain transplants, they were satisfyingly complex operations from a medical point of view. The security was still a nightmare, and they were still the least productive operations Lotus had done. And she still did them, to keep her hand in. She’d asked Vasa Luigi if he wanted her to direct his, and he arched an eyebrow at her and declined. She still had an incident rate of less than three percent, if it was safety he was looking for. But he seemed unexcited at the prospect. Things had already cooled off between them by that point.

After his clone had been growing for a few years, Vasa Luigi had ordered one up for her and presented it as fait accompli. He’d casually referred to the clone as Lilly, in consideration of her progenitor. Lilly Senior would be undone if she had known the existence of another Durona brain.

Briefly Lotus toyed with potential uses for the clone: training it, and sending the stealth Durona back into House Fell as a spy; using it as a spare body, to give herself another hundred years of life; or letting its brain mature in the simple, stupid fashion that the crèche handlers favored and then setting it free.

Was the Durona brain really so perfectly suited to research? Or was it the training? Could Lotus replicate it, outside the Durona Group?

After considering, Lotus liked the idea of doing nothing to the clone. That would be even more galling to Lilly: a Durona brain left fallow, the product of so many years of genetic tweaking left in a trash heap. Or incinerated as so much biohazard waste, as if they wouldn’t all get there in the end. However, Lotus found that she couldn’t let the experiment sit. By the time the clone was three, Lotus had been consumed by the idea of another copy—a control specimen—and had taken to visiting it. There were still echoes of Rose, of Chrys, of Lilly, but for the first time, Lotus felt like she wasn’t talking to herself.

So when young Lilly asked about the crèche, the medical tests, and the friends who had left, Lotus found she didn’t want to lie. She did pause for a moment, thinking about how she would’ve wanted to hear the truth about her family’s work. Then she took a deep breath and faced Lilly squarely.

“Let me tell you about the surgeries I do.”


End file.
